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Jeffrey Goldberg, The World's Pornographic Interest in Jewish Moral Failure:

Okay, yesterday I was depressed. Today, I'm just pissed off. It's absolutely astonishing to me how interested the world is in Israel's failings. This is the source of a bitter but hilarious observation I once heard a Kurdish leader make: He was complaining to me that his people were cursed, and I asked him what he meant: Cursed by geography, cursed by their proximity to Kurd-hating Arabs, what? He said the Kurds were cursed because they didn't have Jewish enemies. Only with Jewish enemies would the world pay attention to their plight.

Sobre o cavaquismo

Excelente texto, aqui, de Luciano Amaral:

Mas nessas análises tenho sentido falta de uma nota: é que o cavaquismo foi o mais importante momento de credibilização (talvez mesmo de salvação) da nossa democracia. Já ninguém se lembra como ela era antes da primeira maioria absoluta de Cavaco. Já nos esquecemos como, entre 1976 e 1987, o sistema político vivia em absoluto descrédito: governos que duravam entre dois anos e alguns meses, conflitos permanentes entre os diversos órgãos de soberania ou coligações espúrias e frágeis. Já ninguém se recorda da sensação de crise perpétua, senão mesmo de inviabilidade, do regime. As maiorias absolutas de Cavaco acabaram com isso. Dado que nessa altura se viveu também o melhor período de crescimento económico desde os últimos anos do Estado Novo, o cavaquismo deu-nos a ideia de que afinal poderíamos ser como qualquer outro país europeu: calmo, estável e próspero. Não por acaso, quem recentemente votou em Sócrates e no próprio Cavaco quis fazer-nos regressar a essa “idade de ouro”.

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Joshua Keating, "Blaming Google Earth for Mumbai":

This isn't a new issue. The al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade also apparently used Google Earth to plan rocket attacks on Israel. But holding Google responsible for terrorists using its product makes about as much sense as blaming the Wright brothers for 9/11.

Just as the fact that terrorists take advantage of the laxer security regimes in democratic societies isn't a reason to unduly curb civil liberties, it would be a mistake to curtail the development of useful technologies because the bad guys have figured out how to use them too.

Miguel Botelho Moniz, Diferenças Salariais:

Numa análise que ignore aspectos eventualmente menos transparentes na atribuição destes vencimentos, a conclusão provável é que existirá maior competição entre pessoas qualificadas pelo cargo de chairman da Reserva Federal do que pelo cargo de governador do Banco de Portugal. A questão que se levanta é outra: Face ao desempenho algo insatisfatório (to say the least) do actual governador, especialmente em função das suas reduzidas responsabilidades, será aceitável tal diferença?

Adam, "Two buck Barack":

So the New York Times is breathless that "Obama Hauls in Record $750 Million for Campaign." A lot of people are astounded at the scale of the money, and I am too. In a long, hard campaign, he raised roughly $2.50 per American, and spent slightly less than that.

Unusually, he ended his campaign not in debt, but with a small surplus. Everyone and their brother is now grubbing after that, according to the Times article. If we had a campaign finance system with transparency and accountability for donations, we would likely see spending levels like this more often, and we might well see a broader range of interesting candidate emerge and get voters engaged again.

The reality is while $750 million is a lot of money, it's also a surprisingly small amount of money. For comparison, the 2008 Federal budget was 2.9 trillion dollars, or roughly 3900 times larger than the budget Obama just oversaw. It's also only 1/20th of the amount we're spending to keep Rick Wagoner in a job.